New stuff, though not as much as I originally plan…
New stuff, though not as much as I originally planned. Things have been picking up this week on several fronts. I recently got a call from my place of dubious employment saying there was a “99.9999% chance” of my continued employment there. All I have to do, aside from a little overtime I took care of last night, is show up on Thursday afternoon at their offices to reassure various government officials that I am not, in fact, a former axe-murderer on the lamb. I think I can pull it off.
Lin Yi-ping, my little brother (from my Taiwanese family) came up to Taipei the other day along with his wife and two kids. I hadn’t seen him in ages. He’s a year younger than I am, works at a company in Hsinchu and lives with my gan-ma in her house. His kids, one boy and one girl, are cute but a real handful (they’re the reason for the Filipina maid they hired, apparently). He makes a good father, though. I should pay them all a visit in Hsinchu sometime. Yi-ping says the city’s gone downhill lately; I guess I missed the high point because it certainly wasn’t anything to shout about when I lived there in the early 90s.
The weather yesterday was fine as fine can be, albeit a bit chilly in the morning, so I rode my motorcycle up the little valley behind my temporary housing in search of a good trail to hike. I stuffed my helmet in my backpack and set out, only to realize about five minutes later that it was quite uncomfortable having a motorcycle helmet hitting my back with every step, so I took it back and hooked it to the side of my bike, hoping that it wouldn’t get stolen while I was away.
I walked past the old ruined buildings and strange-looking holes in the ground I saw last time, past the lake and up into the mountains. I didn’t see a soul after the lake, where a family was sitting at a table watching the turtles dabbling about in the muddy water. The path was very small and rocky; were it not for the little flags left by a mountain service I would have gotten very lost very quickly. The forest was damp and lush, almost a jungle, the air striking in its freshness and full of newly released oxygen. I know, I sound like a bad wine critic when I write things like that.
I reached a crest, on the other side of which were some orange groves. A sign pointed the way up to Eagle Peak, so I followed the trail up, sometimes using some leftover ropes to haul myself up the steep slope. Before long I reached the top, where a little circle of bare ground was surrounded by foliage partially burnt by lightning and cut down by hand. The only sound was that of a wounded butterfly flapping around on the ground. I shot a small video of myself, looking old and haggard after the mere 200-meter ascent, making banal remarks about the scenery.
After successfully resisting the urge to run around nekkid in the foliage (or did I? You’ll never know!), I made my way down to the orange grove, where a couple of hikers were stretching. One of them was doing Chi-gong exercises. I asked him if there was another way down, and he said I could accompany him down the other side and around to Nei-gou Mountain. His name was Gao Ming-he, and he had quit his job after saving up enough money to live on for several years without working. He said he walked around the mountains every day, just for fun, and had been doing do for around five years. He was also working on a form of Chi-gong. “If I told you what it could do, you’d say I was crazy,” he told me as we walked. “We’ll see.”
After a while we came across an abandoned homestead. The house had no roof left and was crumbling inside, but you could tell it was lived in up until the 70s from the old TVs, sofas and LPs still inside. A decrepit vanity’s mirror was surprisingly clean, as if someone was maintaining it. Spooky stuff.
We continued on down the mountain until we came across a small river. Along the way we would occasionally pass other walkers, many of whom were older men walking their dogs. A river project is currently underway upstream, turning the water brown, but the banks and bridges were quite nice. Farmers in their fields were burning rice husks, turning the green landscape hazy and almost dreamlike.
We started up another upward leading road, one I would have assumed was someone’s driveway but turned out to be a public thoroughfare. We climbed up Nei-gou Mountain, which wasn’t nearly as high as Eagle Peak (so named, according to Gao Ming-he, because it was so infested with snakes that eagles went there for frequent snacking), but it was a good workout. Then we went down the other side and reached the ruins I had passed earlier on. Ming-he said it was an old coal mining community and pointed out the columns that had supported the mining cars, and the holes turned out to be the old mines. There’s not much left, but it’s facinating to walk through and wonder what it must have been like back in the Japanese colonial period when the place was full of people. It’s in the middle of nowhere even by today’s standards; imagine what it must have been like back then. Apparently the hills between Taipei and Jilong were full of little mining communities like that, though. All of them were abandoned when it was discovered that it was cheaper and easier to just import the stuff.
The sun was setting and it was getting quite chilly when we got back to the chicken ranch at the end of the road. Thankfully my helmet was still attached to Gendoyun and I could ride back to the apartment without fearing a ticket. I had gotten the call from my employer when I was hiking, and he had sent me some work via email, but I couldn’t get to it until after dinner. Still, work is work, and I’m glad to have the chance to get some overtime in. I’ve still got a lot of debt to pay off.
The new sight and sound of the moment are up. The sight is me cavorting on the mountaintop, of course, and the new sound is Lou Da-you’s “Hometown II”, a Taiwanese song recalling Taiwan’s history in a rather abbreviated form. Another one of my favorite pieces. Enjoy. I’ve also been trying to set up a Chinese-language blog, but I have yet to get it working.
Oh, and here’s a picture of me sneaking around an electronics store. Now what could I be up to, hmmm? More trouble, that’s what.
